


Mark's Sketchbook

by LuminiaAravis



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Development, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, Feels, Gay Male Character, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, Sketches, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 05:51:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6892654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuminiaAravis/pseuds/LuminiaAravis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to "Mark's Journal." A series of sketches about my Male!sosu and his adventures before, during, and after Fallout 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mark is a Lovestruck Idiot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, this is basically a series of sketches -- I'm not going to call them "drabbles" per se because they're a little bit too long, and they're more tightly linked than a series of drabbles. I'm trying to get at a theme that they all have in common. And I desperately wanted to add to the insufficiently small collection of M!SS and MacCready stuff. 
> 
> I also wanted to kind of do a character study for MacCready, because he has so many goddamn layers to him, just layers and layers of anger covering up humor to cover up sadness to cover up doubt to cover up confidence and ugh. Someone get this boy out of his wrapper. (And by wrapper I mean pants.)
> 
> I'm going to try and make this a combination of platonic, romantic, and sexual relationship stuff. No chapter should be entirely one or the other, though, they should all be sort of a mix of all three. But the balance is going to change throughout. It starts out fluffy-ish, but I plan on getting a little more explicit later on. Hence the rating.
> 
> So I hope you enjoy, and all comments are wanted and welcome! Cheers!

"Nothing like a good old Nukular apocalypse to bring people together."

-My cousin, in response to this story

* * *

 

Honestly, I didn’t know what I had been expecting, taking him out into the open like that. I had known ahead of time that Faneuil Hall was crawling with Supers. That’s why I’d brought the T45 in the first place, because I knew full fucking well that I was bringing this kid, this scrappy little person, into genuine grade-A deep shit.

This man, this boy, with a voice like sweet, piercing, fragrant smoke; with eyes like galaxies each; both smolderingly, deeply angry and buoyantly jocund at the same time. And I’d put all of that beloved duplicity in awful jeopardy.

I’d told him to stay back, to grab some cover. And for the most part, he’d listened. Been professional about it, taken orders. He was hiding behind a cracked concrete half-wall on the veranda of an abandoned building across the street from the hall, taking potshots at the pack of Supers holed up about a hundred yards away.

I heard the faint beeping noise before the explosion. Supermutant suicide bomber. You know, every once and a while you run into one with a mini-nuke that just runs at you and hopes for the biggest boom possible. Now I was safe in the T45. But MacCready was out in the open. No armor, no helmet. Just his ratty old duster and shitty green scarf.

It took me too long to find the Super carrying the bomb, and too long to react. It took me a second too long to take aim and pop him a few times with my ten mil. He was almost down, stumbling out into the road. But he was still coming.

"Stay down!” I shouted. Bang. _“Stay down!”_ A hit and a miss. _“STAY DOWN!”_ The Super was gonna make it to me, he was within arm’s reach. My mind went blank save for one word. _“ROB!”_

I stepped in front of the Super just as the mini-nuke in his hand went off. I flung my arms wide, in an instinctive attempt to shield Rob from the explosion. Even in the T45, I was hurled backwards like I’d been hit by a train. I slammed into the wall behind me, my spine and shoulders jarring into the hard armor frame, my neck snapped back inside the helmet. That was a back of bruises and a concussion in the making.

I couldn’t see or hear for a few seconds. But the suit was airtight and so my eardrums had been saved, at least, and the visor had protected my eyes from the nebulous white light and roiling red flames that followed. The wind had been knocked out of me. I caught my breath.

I pulled at the armor, straining to stand back up. My vision was blurred ever-so-slightly. I looked around wildly for Rob, spinning in a full circle two or three times before it registered that he was lying face-down on the concrete in front of me. I holstered the ten mil I hadn’t realized I was still holding.

I hadn’t been afraid before now. And I don’t think it was because I was in the armor, either. I’ve always thought that I could handle anything they could do to _me._ Break a few bones? They heal. Lose some blood? I’d make more. Eat a few bullets? They usually come back out. Pretty much everything that could happen to me could be undone. (Except death. But as far as that goes, I make it a point to not have an opinion one way or another about being dead, since, objectively, I’d be the person least concerned with it when it happens.)

But Jesus, God in heaven, for some reason, seeing Rob lying there scared the shit out of me. Fuck whatever it was that was happening with me, what had happened to _him_? If he had so much as a bloody nose –- I felt the blood rush to my head, I was furious –- I wanted to scream.

I ran towards Rob. Laying there. It took years to reach him. I couldn’t feel for a pulse or breath in the armor, but the hydraulics made it effortless to roll him over and pick him up, and then to press his chest to mine, and wrap my arms around him to try and shield him from the Supermutants’ suppressing fire that was still peppering us as I ran.

I got the fuck away. Back the way we came. I jogged a few blocks with Rob in my arms, trying and failing not to jostle him around, holding his head tightly against my shoulder, supported in the sharp crook of my armored elbow.

I found a quiet-ish alley –- one that was as quiet as you could hope for in the post-apocalyptic city, anyway –- and laid Rob down on a pile of dissolving newspapers and plastic wrappers. Gently, as slowly as was physically fucking possible, despite the fact that the T45 had shitty fine motor controls, despite the fact that my arms were shaking with him still in them. Then I stepped back and popped the hatch on my armor, slipped out of it faster than I ever had before.

I was dizzy, I felt sick, my legs and arms were shaking so badly I could hardly walk, but everything from the neck up seemed paralyzed. It felt like I was seeing through someone else’s eyes, feeling through someone else’s skin. I knelt down next to him, and hovered my ear above his mouth. I felt and heard short, weak breaths. _Thank Christ_.

Not like I didn’t know CPR, I mean, I _was_ in the army for crying out loud, but CPR’s not supposed to get someone breathing again. It’s just supposed to hold the victim over until EMS (or a battlefield medic) shows up, it’s supposed to get them just enough air so they don’t suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen in the meantime. Fucked if there was anything that resembled a respirator anywhere in the Commonwealth.

I know I should have checked for injuries first, but I was compelled to sweep off his hat, so I could see his face more clearly in the shade. It was so. Fucking. Difficult. To keep myself from touching his cheek, from running my fingers through his copper-brown hair.

 _Get a grip, fruit basket,_ I told myself. I unbuttoned his coat and unwrapped the green scarf, so I could check for wounds on his torso through his filthy white undershirt. There were a few punctures on his chest, gently letting blood into the already fetid fabric, looked like shrapnel from the explosion. That was all fixable. There were some smaller marks on his arms and thighs, and only minor scratches on his face.

What bothered me the most were the bruises around his neck shaped like fingers. And how some were old, and some were new.

I took a small, mostly-clean scalpel from my bag and extracted the shrapnel from his chest. Luckily it was all superficial, nothing deep, none of it had caught anything vital. Bleeding looked to be minimal. I got about a dozen pieces of metal and tiny fragments of concrete out of him, one out of his right shoulder, and one out of his right thigh.

I threw the scalpel away in the pile of garbage. I got a Stimpak out of my bag next, and held it between my teeth as I wrapped my arm around him again, shifting so his head was against my shoulder. I put the needle into his right bicep and administered the drug.

That woke him the fuck right up. There were a few seconds of silence as the stimulant careened through his system, before it hit him all at once. He gasped, his eyes snapping open, his arms shooting out, hands reaching for something that wasn’t there.

“Easy, easy!” I said, doing my best to suppress the panic in my voice as he coughed and gasped for air, turning towards me, fingers taking hold of my shirtsleeves of their own accord. I could barely see his face, pressed against the inside of my shoulder, as he struggled for breath. “Just try and breathe,” I chanted, “just try and breathe, just try and breathe.” I fucking did it, I let my free hand stray to his head and card through his hair, supporting his head and neck as he shook in my arms.

He looked up at me through bleary eyes, squinting through pained tears, flecks of blood on his cracked lips. A toxic, fatal blend of fear, doubt, relief.

It killed me to look at him and know that as much as I wanted to hold him, to possess and support his body, however much of it there was, to kiss his hair, his cheeks, his mouth, to run my hands down his arms and thighs, to press his chest against mine, to wrap myself around his hips –- it killed me to know that I couldn’t do any of that, because I’d only known him for three days, it was too soon, we were in a working relationship for Chrissakes, doing it under these circumstances was opportunistic and predatory and didn’t give him the opportunity to refuse, he was still angry and didn’t talk to me more than he had to apart from the wisecracks he used to hold himself together, and besides -–

The look lasted a split-second, and then he was up again. Out of my arms, out of my reach. Jacket back firmly on his shoulders, scarf resting innocently around his neck. Hat firmly back on his head.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Thanks for that,” he said, deceptively casual. Like he could fool me. Or maybe he’d needed to fool himself, at the time. Looking back, it seems plausible. Knowing what I know about Rob now, I understand that he wasn’t ready for any kind of intimacy at that point. Not sex, not love, not even friendship. So the fact that I’d placed myself closer to him than was strictly necessary --

“You saved my ass back there. That bomb would’ve –-”

“You don’t need to say it,” I blurted. So he didn’t. He probably could have said it, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle hearing it. Not just then. He treated me to a crooked half-smile, though, before looking away. “Are you gonna be okay?” I asked as gently as I could.

“I am now,” he replied, doing me the courtesy of eye contact and a cheeky smile again. “Seriously, you have no idea.”

“Why?” I asked. “No idea about what?”

His eyes flicked around as he spoke. The alley wall, the sky, the ground, my feet. “Just, not everyone would stick their neck out for me like that. I remember the bomb going off, and you –-  _jumped_ in front of me.” He looked me dead in the eyes again. “I just. Why?”

I made a conscious effort to soften the lines of my face before I answered. “I can’t really explain,” I said. “I mean, part of it was instinct. We’re partners, right?”

“Partners?” he said, giving me a skeptical glance. “You hired me. We’re not partners, you’re the boss.”

“Semantics,” I said, waving the comment away. “We’re on the same team. That’s what teammates do, they watch each other’s back.”

“Fuck, I mean, _rrgh_. No substitute for the F-word,” he mumbled. “That’s, holy crap,” he said, “Okay, teammates watch each other’s back. Right. But they don’t step in front of _nuclear bombs_ for each other.”

“Don’t they?”

“No, because that’s insane!”

“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but why is it so hard for you to believe what happened?”

“Because I don’t get saved, alright?” he said, angrily whipping the cap off his head and crushing it in his hands. “People don’t do that kind of stuff for me.”

I was silent for a moment. I wanted to give him a chance to speak first. “Why not?” I asked.

“They just –- don’t,” he said lamely. “I’ve never really been worth it to someone before, I guess.”

We were quiet for a long time.

Then I broke the silence. “So you’ve never had someone willing to help you when your life was in danger.”

“More or less,” he replied, sitting heavily on the pile of trash. It looked like all the fight had gone out of him.

“Not even if, not even if it didn’t cost them a thing?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered, crossing his legs in front of him.

“Fuck that, it _does_ matter,” I said, dropping the gently-listening thing. “Why do you say it doesn’t? Why doesn’t it matter to you, if people care about you enough to save your ass when you’re in trouble?”

“It just –- because I don’t get saved, I don’t get the easy, happy ending or whatever.”

“Why the fuck not?” I asked, a beat of anger behind my words.

"I just –- I just –-”

“Is it because you don’t think you deserve it? Who the fuck told you that?” I pressed, all the gentleness gone from my tone. “Was it someone you worked for? Someone tell you you’re not worth it?”

He didn’t meet my gaze. “Waste of caps,” he mumbled.

 _“Fuck that!”_ I shouted. “How dare you let them tell you how much your life is worth. Fuck that, fuck all of that, fuck whoever it was who choked the shit out of you and left those fucking awful bruises on you!”

“Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do!” he shouted back. “You know what, you don’t know what it’s been like, having to take all the shittiest jobs because I’ve got a target on my back, because nobody wants to touch me, because nobody cares how reliable I am or how good of a shot I am, because all they care about is the price tag I’m wearing, like a big goddamn neon sign over my head that says _Discount, damaged goods_ on it!”

Angry tears were hiding in the corners of his eyes, his face was flushed with anger and shock. “Why does it matter to you, anyway?” he said harshly. “You’re just protecting your investment, right?”

“Yeah, that’s all it is,” I said quietly. “Just stepped in front of a mini-nuke so I’d be around to reap returns on 250 caps. Right.” In his defense, Rob looked slightly ashamed of himself at that point. “Why is it so fucking hard for you to believe that I care?”

“Haven’t given you any reason to,” Rob mumbled in reply.

“Bull-fucking-shit,” I replied. “You’re a really great person, you know that?” Now _that_ seemed to get Rob’s interest, and he looked at me hopefully. “You’re fun to be around. I love your sense of humor, it keeps things interesting. Keeps things fresh. And do you know how many times you’ve saved me, just by being good at what you do? Because you’re an _amazing_ shot. Don’t let anybody tell you different. I mean, I just really enjoy spending time with you. I’d hire you again in a heartbeat, hell, I’d have you along for the trip even if you didn’t do a goddamn thing for me combat-wise.”

Rob looked like someone who’d been kept in a dark room, trying to adjust to having the lights switched on. Cautious, optimistic, a little surprised. “Huh. Nobody’s ever told me my personality was anything other than passing, I guess,” he said, smiling and trying to hide it. “I mean, my career rests on my reputation as a sniper. So that’s not news. But you actually _like_ traveling with me?”

“You make the road –- well, pleasant, actually,” I said, reflecting the shy smile back at him. “Honest to God. Things are dramatically less shitty when you’re around. You make me feel like I fit in, for some reason. The world doesn’t seem so strange with you, I feel ready to take on anything with you near me.”

Rob was grinning now, but his chin was tucked down still; it wasn’t a grin meant to let me know he was happy, but one meant to prove something to himself. His face glowed, flushed with what seemed to me like warm joy.

“Please, _please_ ,” I said, “I know it’s still really soon to be talking about this kind of shit, and I don’t want to make this weird. But the caps aren’t important to me, they weren’t even really that important when I hired you. I just got a really good feeling about you when we met, and I wanted to stay with you for as long as you’d let me. We have a good thing going, and fucked if I’ll let it end with your horrible tragic death.”

He almost laughed. “Yeah, that _would_ put a damper on things.”

“Look, whatever it is, if it’s some assfaces that’ve come to collect, if it’s a fight that’s gone south, whatever. Doesn’t matter. I wanna be there. You protect me, so I’m going to protect you.”

“Yeah, but you _pay_ me,” he said.

“The caps don’t matter,” I repeated. “Not to me, not where you’re concerned.”

“Blasphemy,” Rob said.

I knew he was trying to be funny, but I had to catch him. “Don’t talk like that. I mean it, you’re worth all the caps in the world to me. And I don’t want to hear any more about how much you think you’re worth. Because if it’s a number less than infinity, you’re wrong.”

“So what you’re saying is I should’ve asked you for more caps when we met.”

“I’m saying that, going forward, you’re not gonna have to ask at all. My caps are yours, everything I have I’ll share. Weapons, food, water, drugs, meds, clothes, armor, heat, shelter. Through fat times and thin.”

“Wait, what? _All of that –-_ You -– you _do_ know what you’re implying, right?”

“Yup. You’ve got a job for life with me, asshole.”

“You sure you want to –- man, are you serious?”

“Absolutely. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“For _life_.”

“For life,” I replied.

“You’re taking me on for _good_. Like, no end date. Indefinitely.”

I laughed. “Not indefinitely. Just until one of us bites it.”

Rob blinked. “I, I don’t know. I mean, _yes_ , of course, yes, that’s, this is, _holy shit_.

We both got up off the trash heap, and I reluctantly squished myself back into the T45. We both drew our weapons and loaded them. Then we ran back into the courtyard of Faneuil Hall and finished cleaning up.

That made Rob smile.

So, in a weird roundabout way, on that day I asked Rob to spend the rest of his life with me.

And it was on that day that I realized that even though Robert Joseph MacCready talks a big game, even though he’s always conspicuously confident, even though he’s resilient in ways that I still can’t understand, he needed somewhere soft to land. He could deal with all the shitheads he met, all the debt collectors, he could keep himself safe and out of trouble.

But I resolved that he should never _have_ to. That out of all the shitheads in the world, he deserved to meet someone who wasn’t. Someone who didn’t treat him like metal that had yet to be refined and tempered, someone who treated him like he wasn’t a footnote in someone else’s story.

He needed someone who would be exceedingly gentle with him, someone who would be more patient with him than they were with themselves. Someone who _craved_ him, who was hungry for everything about him. Someone who would make his world a little softer. Someone constant, someone promised, someone who would continue running along with him, like a footpath along a coursing stream, a countersong to his melody, supporting him and making him stronger and more beautiful for it.

And, call me presumptuous, but on that same day, I realized that I wanted that someone to be me.


	2. Mark and Nora's Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark and Nora have an unusual wedding in January of the year 2077, while Mark is deployed in Alaska.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something occurred to me while I was playing Fallout. Since the timeline in the Fallout world branches off from ours after 1945, I got to thinking. There's no cultural or historical evidence in the Fallout world that there was ever a Civil Rights, Women's Rights, or LGBTQ Rights movement. Not in the music, or the art, or anything. So it seems to me that life in the year 2077 is like the 1950s in more than one sense - it seems that a gay person in the Prewar Fallout world might not be safe coming out of the closet. And that's part of what led me to write Mark's backstory the way I did. 
> 
> In the postwar world, though, after 2077, I figured people probably have better things to do then go around and try and control who frickity fracks with each other. So LGBTQ, Women's rights, and Civil Rights issues probably took a backseat or became a non-issue after the bombs fell. That's whey there's little to no stigma around Mark's and Rob's relationship in the future. Or at least that's how I figure.
> 
> WARNING - THIS SCENE CONTAINS REFERENCES TO DUBIOUS INTERCOURSE.

Mark and Nora’s Wedding.

Telecommunications had always been sketchy at the front. It was a good day when the phone lines worked without a delay, and it was a virtual miracle when the videocom felt like cooperating. Corporal Mark Justice Pier wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or terrified that his call to the lower 48 States was going through. His CO, captain Frey, picked up the receiver.

“Operator? Thank Christ, we’ve been ringing you for half an hour. This is Captain Frey -- yes, this is the call from Alaska we told you to expect. Uh-huh. Massachusetts. Boston area. Yeah.”

Mark missed the next few lines of conversation. A bomb went off, rendering Mark, Frey, and the three other COs in the trailer temporarily deaf. Mark looked around for reassurance from someone. Anyone. Not the captain, not the lieutenant, not the preacher there to do the ceremony. Frey gave the operator the number off a steno pad on the desk in front of him.

Mark fidgeted in his chair. The undersuits provided to the infantry for use under the T45 model power armor were not warm. His boots and gloves were not insulated. He tucked his hands under his arms, crossed his ankles and held his knees together tight. Freezing wind whipped under the door and nipped at everyone’s toes, sweeping snow over the telecom cables, rustling disorganized paperwork on the fold-up desks.

 _It must be easier to keep a straight face when you actually signed up for this shit_ , Mark thought to himself. None of the officers so much as acknowledged the storm outside. Or the next bomb that dropped. Closer this time.

After fussing with the dials on the monitor, Frey stepped back from the videocom set so everyone could see a grainy black-and-white video feed of a tiny church altar. Empty except for a priest and a girl dressed in white. A heavily pregnant girl with short brown hair. Holding her bridal bouquet like her life depended on it.

“You can start, father,” Frey said.

The chaplain on Mark’s end stepped forward. “Rise, boy,” he said, placing a frigid marble-white hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Dearly beloved,” he began, but stopped short when Mark snorted.

Frey gave Mark a warning glare out of the corner of his eye. “Sorry,” Mark said. “Just didn’t picture today going quite like this.”

“I’m sure none of us did,” the chaplain replied placidly. “Let us continue. We are gathered here today to witness the union of this man,” he indicated Mark, “and this woman in the bonds of holy matrimony --” another bomb. Even closer.

On the other end of the videocom, the priest back at home in Massachusetts had a supportive hand on Nora’s shoulder, too. Mark knew there was a delay with the sound, but he could still make out Nora’s reaction when she heard the bomb drop. Not her face, that was too grainy. But she was startled, she gripped her bouquet so hard that one of the ribbons on it frayed and fell off.

“Does anyone here object to these two young people being married?” the chaplain asked the telecom trailer. Mark cast a worried glance at Captain Frey. Just yesterday Frey had told Mark what he thought of the whole thing, but now, the captain was silent. Nobody spoke a word of protest. “Very well. Is there any objection from your end, father?”

After a few seconds’ delay, he priest on the other end of the videocom shook his head clearly and solemnly. Nora was like a statue. The chaplain beside Mark continued. “Do you, Mark Justice Pier, take this woman, Nora Marie Kennedy, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, through sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

“I do,” Mark whispered. A puff of condensation escaped his dry lips and disappeared on the wind.

The priest in Massachusetts nodded and gave the thumbs-up. Looked like Nora had agreed, as well. “Then I now pronounce you man and wife,” the chaplain said loudly, trying his hardest to outdo the arctic wind wracking the trailer. “Come here and sign the license, child.”

Mark couldn’t take his eyes off the video screen. Nora looked like she was exhausted. After the vows were said on her side, she let out a huge sigh, and unconsciously placed a protective hand over her stomach. The white fabric of the wedding gown stretched uncomfortably tight over the baby, almost nine months into its term, now, if Mark remembered right.

Nora left the altar and paced over to the camera, treading lightly, her feet swollen in heels that fit when she bought them. Mark could see her face a little more clearly. She looked different than the one time they’d met before. Years ago. In high school. Sophomore year. Someone else’s arms slung round her shoulders. But that didn’t matter, now.

It would be a disservice to her to remember her like that. This was her now, older, wiser, stronger. About to be a wife and a mom. Nora smiled as best she could, and blew a kiss at the camera.

Mark pressed his own numb fingers to his lips, and then to the video screen. “Shouldn’t be long, Nora,” he said. “I only have fifty six more days. I’m coming straight to Boston when I’m done.”

After the delay, Nora beamed. “Can’t wait,” she said, distorted, crackly. Shit. Mark hadn't remembered what her voice sounded like. Fifty-six more days.

“Sign the damn license,” Captain Frey said. “You need to be back in your armor in five minutes, Pier.”

Without another thought, Mark left Nora alone and the chaplain turned off the video feed. Mark signed the marriage license, the paper and ink smooth and gilded beneath his frozen fingers. “Send that to the States and have her sign it,” Mark said.

“We’ll take care of it,” the chaplain assured him, as he slipped the license into a manila envelope. “Congratulations. God bless the two of you.” And with that he swept out of the trailer.

The other officers followed, leaving Mark and Captain Frey alone.

“That was some grade-A acting, Pier,” Frey commented. “Even I thought you had feelings for that girl, for a second there.”

“How do you know I don’t?” Mark replied.

Frey leaned in close. A little too close. “Because we both know this marriage is strictly political. You may have saved yourself from a dishonorable discharge, criminal charges, life in prison, et cetera, but I know your type.”

“My type. What, people who get married though they hardly know each other?”

“Fags. Little fairies. Pole fancies.”

Mark forced a cold laugh. “Right. Because that’s a lot worse than blackmail. Like that late-night rendezvous in the mess hall. You threatened to out me if I didn’t show up and, what was it? _Suck my dick like your career depends on it. Because it does_.”

Frey sighed and clapped Mark on the shoulder. “You’re not looking at the big picture. We need every man we can get against the commies, Pier. See, this is why they don’t let faggots work for the government. You’re just not a patriotic bunch, are you?”

“I’d imagine anyone who was dragged up to the asshole of the world against their will would feel some sort of resentment,” Mark said.

“And I’d imagine you’d be happy near any kind of asshole,” Frey retorted.

Mark muttered under his breath, “Maybe if you used soap.”

“I heard that,” Frey said. “You know, ever since the day I met you, you’ve been a smarmy little fuck. Acting like you’re above it all. You have been a thorn in my side since basic, Pier.”

“And you’ve been a dick in my ass, what’s your point?” Mark said, voice rising.

Frey took a quick step forward and grabbed the back of Mark’s collar, slamming him down onto the fold-up desk, which creaked and wobbled under his weight. Mark knew better than to put up a fight at this point. “I wonder what I can do to you in five minutes,” Frey thought aloud. The captain’s eyes were clouded, his sallow, stubbly mouth drawn into a leery smile.

“You wanna know what you can do?” Mark answered, almost shouting, now. Another bomb went off outside. “You can fuck me right here, right on the table where I signed my marriage license. Exercise your _jus prima noctis_ , and then you can send me out in the fucking cold, suit me up and send me out there to die! Like you have every day for the last two-hundred thirty-three days and fourteen hours, and then you can sit in here where it’s just marginally warmer and safer and hope to God that I don’t come back. Sir.”

Frey blinked. Another bomb went off, the closest yet. Frey didn’t speak, he just listened for a moment. “We’re losing the line, the front,” Frey said to himself. He let go of Mark’s neck. “Get -- get suited up. Go. Hold the fucking line.”

Mark stood up and adjusted the collar on his jumpsuit, and pulled a worn wool cap on his head. “Right. I’ll go hold the fucking line, sir.” Mark paced carefully towards the trailer door. “And you know, after today, you might want to think twice about fucking with me. I’m a married man, now. _You’ll_ be the one in the wrong, next time. If there is a next time. _You’ll_ be the deviant. Not me.”

“Pier, if I know you at all, it’s that this is the _least_ deviant thing about you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as you all might have noticed, Captain Frey is supposed to be an incarnation of Mercer Frey from Skyrim. And I know some of you actually like Frey's character - but Mark, who was originally a Skyrim character, really only ever saw Frey as a user. Somebody who was mean, unapologetic, and used people to whatever means he saw fit. Honest to God, Mercer Frey still scares the shit out of me to this day. So that's where that all came from.


	3. Homefront

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War never changes. But the battlefield does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was never satisfied with leaving Nora as a plot point, you know? I mean, the whole plot of the fucking game falls apart if the Sole Survivor doesn't care about her or Shaun quite a good little bit. And sure, I know you don't have to stick to canon to play the game. But the male Sole Survivor is a war vet. Tell me Nora wouldn't play a role in getting him adjusted to living civilian life again, especially with a new baby. And he and Nora seem so happy together before the game starts. I'm not satisfied leaving it at that. Especially because Nora has become a huge part of shaping Mark's character, of helping him deal with anxiety and depression, and helping him learn not to apologize for being who he is. So this is the second part of my study of their relationship.

Sure enough, fifty-six days after the wedding, I was almost at my new home. Well, fifty-seven. It took a day to get back to Boston. I’d packed up my duffel, took everything in the world I had in a carry-on, on that commercial flight south. All I had to wear was a pair of careworn fatigues; a ratty, greasy wool knit-cap; my combat boots; and a bomber jacket that smelled like sulfur. I curled up inside the jacket like a snail inside its shell, desperate to avoid the misty-eyed stares of civilians watching a war hero returning home. I just wanted it to end.

I tried to sleep on the plane, squashed between a predictably boring businessman and a quiet old lady who kept accidentally poking me with her knitting needles. But I couldn’t manage to keep my eyes closed. Normally my last thoughts before I drift off are expectations for what happens next - but I just didn’t know. I’d never been to Boston. It had been years since I’d seen Nora.

I just kept repeating the wedding in my head. Mentally rereading the letters we had exchanged setting up the whole thing. I have an unusually strong sort of mnemonic memory. Ever since I can remember, it’s been incredibly easy for me to memorize the written word. Prose, lists, poems, anything. I can usually remember every single word for months afterwards. Sometimes longer. Nora’s letters were still fresh in my mind, as if I’d just opened them.

 _Dear_   _Mark_ , she'd written,  _I will do all I can to help. You don't need to worry about taking advantage of me because there's no advantage to be had. Jack and my parents are out of the picture. It's just me and you and the baby. You do not need to beg me for a decent chance, you've been more than decent to me. All you have to do is tell me how I can reach you to get you out of danger._

I'd reread that line over and over,  _Just me and you and the baby. Me and you and the baby._ And to be given a chance, let alone a decent one, after everything that Frey had done. It was beyond anything I'd hoped for. 

So I couldn’t sleep. I knew, but I still didn’t _know_.

When I finally got to the terminal, the first thing that shocked me was how loud it all was. Strange, I know. The front is nothing if not noisy. But the bustling, midday, New England airport with its colorfully dressed people, families with children, a different radio blaring a different top-ten hit song every twenty feet; the airbrushed buxom women selling Nuka-Cola, the unnecessary decorations on everything, the smiles, the smiles the smiles; the oversaturated reds and blues and yellows, telling everyone what to do and how; the jazz, the rock, the swing. Everything was too bright, too close, too loud, too zippy-peppy-cheery-swell gee-whiz. Holy _shit_.

I hadn’t missed the culture. Not at all. A world where everything is artificially inflated - colors, sounds, feelings, everything. Fit to burst. Like a balloon full of too much air.

I recognized Nora instantly somehow, even though I hadn’t been able to picture her face in my mind. She’d changed since high school. I hadn’t had enough time to memorize her during the wedding ceremony, but my eyes were drawn to her _apartness_ , sort of - her quiescence amidst an intensely busy scene. Her porcelain cheeks and delicate chin; long, lancing brows; dark, thin lashes; lips shimmering peach, drawn in an expectant half-smile. Hair somehow carelessly wavy and light and impeccably tidy at the same time.

She’d done me the dignity of skipping the welcome home sign, not like the families of so many other eagerly-awaited travellers, standing in place waving banners and pom-poms for their loved ones. Nora stood there, stock-still, like a bulwark, waiting for me. Dressed simply in a long dress and wool overcoat. Holding a tiny bundle in her arms.

Images of a faceless girl screaming, in labor, in exquisite agony, alone, flashed across my mind like lightning.

She smiled when her eyes met mine. Not nervously, not awkwardly. She wasn’t one bit afraid. Thank God she knew what she was doing - she beckoned to me with her free arm, and I walked over to her, steps controlled, head held high. Her hands were impossibly soft and warm. She brushed my jaw with her lips, and left a tiny, noncommittal kiss there. Just enough to let me know where she was.

“Glad to have you back stateside,” she said, as normally as anything. As if we were two good friends catching up from the day before. There wasn’t any trace of apprehension, of that breathy note girls get in their voices when they’re overwhelmed.

“Glad to be back,” I replied. And it wasn’t a lie. I was glad to be out of the hellhole, and glad to not have been convicted of -- whatever it was they got fags in the military for nowadays. Glad to be away. I could have knelt down and kissed the floor, I was so grateful to be away. From Frey, from shitty food, from not enough sleep, from no privacy, from the cold, from the actual _battle_ \- from all of it.

I felt like I’d been in a cockfight the whole time, killing people I didn’t know beside people I didn’t care about. Inescapably cold, trying to sleep in the eternal night, crammed in with dozens of other poor fucks who were either stupid enough to volunteer, or were like me - drafted. Eating together. Watching each other. Constantly. And in my case - more.

Nora adjusted the bundle of frilly pastel blankets in the crook of her left arm. Inside was her son, Shaun. Just about a month old. “You want to hold him?” she asked.

“Better not,” I replied, making a show of hiking my duffel further up onto my shoulder. The baby was bright pink and had a fat face. He was tiny, just bafflingly tiny. Eyes shut tight, mouth just slightly open.

“You sure?” Nora asked. I must have given her a look, because she backed it up right away. “Sorry. That’s okay. Don’t want to push. You got here alright?”

“Nobody tried to kill me, so yeah,” I bit back.

I was sort of surprised at how well Nora was handling my acrid temper so far. She looked me in the eye the whole time, didn’t frown, didn’t show signs of uncertainty. “You ready to see the house?”

“Sounds good to me,” Nora said. “I parked outside - I hope you like the car I bought. It was with your service pay, after all. I thought I was gonna have trouble at the dealership, but when the sales guy realized I was an army wife, well.”

Nora hiked the baby further up her shoulder like I had done with my duffel, and led me out to the parking lot. The car was sensible. A pre-owned late-model sedan with a decently large cabin and trunk. I couldn’t have done a better job picking one out.

She fastened Shaun into one of those backwards-facing car seats, and got into the passenger seat herself. “You’re not driving?” I asked.

Nora shrugged. “I thought we were going all the way with this family thing. The wife usually doesn’t drive the family car, right?”

“She does in _this_ family,” Mark said. “Besides, I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Right. I keep forgetting you don’t know the area,” she said, as she got behind the wheel. I took the passenger seat. “Must be a real kick in the teeth.”

“Kind of,” I said as she started the car and pulled out. “Completely honest, I don’t know how I feel about all of this yet. It’s just kind of...happening.”

“I can’t say I follow you completely,” she said. “Not about what happened up North. I just don’t have the frame of reference. But I didn’t see myself in this spot either. So much has happened in the last nine months.”

The car ride home was terrible. Exhaustion finally caught up with me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I got deathly motion sick. Then I was burning up, so I took off my coat. Then I was freezing to death, so I huddled it back on. To her credit Nora tried to keep up with me, adjusting the heat every two goddamn minutes. I held onto the door handle so tight it hurt. I vaguely remember the sound of my own breathing - harsh, forced, pitchy. Nora’s hand covering mine.

Nora brought Shaun into the house, then came back to get me. She peeled me out of the passenger seat, wrapping a protective arm around my waist, strong enough for the both of us. She dropped me in bed. The master bed. Our bed.

I didn’t make it past that.

* * *

 

The world was excruciatingly quiet. Which was fine, it was just what I wanted. Just what I’d prayed for. Unpromising stillness. Immaculate. Secure.

I awoke in darkness and slept in daylight. Snow fell outside the window, snow melted. Hedges budded and trees bloomed. The world turned.

I rejected all light and noise. I didn’t want to listen to or watch anything.

Every bead of water that hit my shoulders in the shower was an accusation. Every step I took was upon broken glass. Single bites of food were enough to make me sick. Any slight tendril of cold or heat were the claws of the Devil himself.

Shaun howled when I got out of the shower. His crib wasn’t twenty paces from me. I waited for Nora to go to him. I passed them by. I went back to bed.

* * *

 

So I learned to sleep through the baby crying at night. I felt bad at first. I told Nora I’d try to do some of the nighttime diaper changes, feedings, and rocking-back-to-sleep. This was before we bought Codsworth, of course. It was just me and her and Shaun in the house she bought with my service pay and the low mortgage rate that GIs got.

Not ashamed to say I was scared. Terrified of neighbors who could see _my_ living room from _their_ living room. Who could see _my_ bedroom through the window, could see right into the place where _I_ was sleeping. Whose shitty kids kept losing baseballs into _our_ yard, whose shitty dogs kept shitting on _our_ grass.

I managed to convince myself that I earned the right to stay indoors for three weeks straight. I had just saved the good ol’ U-S-of-A from slanty-eyed commie bastards who wanted to control our radio, our weather, and our financial markets, and make us all speak Chinese before Christmas. I was a goddamn war hero. (I’d taken one for the team, I guess, but the details could get me arrested.) I deserved some goddamn peace and quiet.

I believe that Nora knew exactly what I was up to. Sure, everyone’s entitled to peace and quiet now and then. But sleeping fourteen hours a day, eating nothing but Sugar Bombs and two-percent, going days without showering or shaving or changing my undershirt, that was a little much. I kept the bedroom dark, I pulled the blinds and kept the lights off. 

Day-to-day activities became white noise. I didn’t want to read anything I hadn’t already read, I didn’t want to watch anything I hadn’t already seen, I didn’t want to listen to anything I hadn’t already heard.

I thought I was being good. I watched Shaun when she had to go out. But back to my point; I was failing. I learned to sleep through the night when Nora and Shaun couldn’t. It took a few weeks, but I did it. I thought that because Nora didn’t wake me, she didn’t ask me about it, she didn’t complain -- I thought that meant she didn’t mind. I thought I was doing okay.

* * *

 

Round about early June I remember slumping into the kitchen after a good sixteen hour nap - it was mid afternoon, I think, and the weather could only be called idyllic. I remember hearing kids playing outside, lawn mowers purring, the occasional car humming by. I remember hearing the leaves on the trees outside rustle in the breeze, through the open kitchen window.

The same breeze teased the edges of the papers strewn across the kitchen table, Nora, my wife by law, bent low over them. She had ink stains on her fingers, a pen in her hand and a pencil in her hair. Poring over bills. Records. Receipts. A huge fat checkbook at her elbow, a calculator balanced on her knee. Managing my life and hers.

Dinner was in the oven, I think it was a chicken lemon something, suitable for summertime. A basket of half-folded laundry was perched expectantly on the couch. The radio tuned to the classical station. It was Schumann, I think. Yes, I remember. Something light and sweet.

And after all that Shaun was safe and sound, asleep in a little baby bouncer on a kitchen chair, right where Nora could reach him if he woke, freed from his usual swaddle and cap and mittens, so the early summer breeze could roll across his tiny chest and belly, and through his wispy hair.

And she seemed so tranquil - she didn’t drum her fingers against the table, she didn’t bounce her leg or tap her toes, she didn’t tug at her curls. She worked at an even pace, eyes bright but not strained, her brow fair and without worry hanging above it, lips neither pursed nor drawn into a frown.

She was the embodiment of the Lady Madonna, sustaining the three of us, and somehow maintaining a state of serenity about her - bringing an otherworldly balance to the sprawl of domestic chaos.

And I hadn’t spoken to her in days.

“Nora?” I offered, shocked at how hard it was to get the sound out of me.

She looked up and managed a smile - where she had been hiding it, I’ll never know. Did she have a stash of them saved up for times like this, or did she save a few just for me, for when I needed one? “Yeah?”

“I - how’s it going?”

“It’s going alright,” she said, leaning back in her chair, letting her dark hair fall over her shoulder.

“Financially?” That was good - numbers. Something I could understand.

“No need to worry,” she said, a confident smile playing across her features. “Neither of us were exactly broke when we went into this, and the car payments and the mortgage are both under control.”

I honestly had no idea how much I had to my name. If you’d asked me before I was drafted, I’d have been able to tell you down to the penny - but lately it hadn’t mattered. “For how long?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” she replied. “You boys don’t have a monopoly on the numbers game, I can handle this.”

Shaun sighed almost inaudibly in his rocker and Nora turned to him, all the lines of her body and face turning flawlessly gentle. “You know what?” I blurted, “how much longer does the chicken or whatever have?”

Nora compulsively checked her wristwatch. “Another half hour,” she said. “I just put it in.”

“Ok, ok, half an hour,” I said to myself. “Right. Nora - Jesus, have you had time - just _relax_ , just take Shaun and go onto the patio, it’s too beautiful out - I’ll get dinner.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Please, just go onto the patio. I wanna get this all straightened out or whatever.”

“If you say so,” she said, lifting the sleeping baby into her arms, cradling him against her chest, and left through the kitchen.

Everything I should have done, everything I failed to do came bursting out of me at once - I took the fastest shower of my life, got dressed in a clean linen shirt and slacks, and let my hair air dry for a bit. I finished folding the laundry and put it all away. Nora had done most of it, though, and I didn’t take the time to match all the socks back up like she did.

It took a few minutes for me to figure out where she’d left off with the paperwork, but I got it together - her system was logical, simple, and straightforward, and I took all of thirty seconds to appreciate it - and shuffled everything into a few manila envelopes and stashed them in the sideboard next to the kitchen table. I scrubbed the ink stain off the tabletop, too.

Next was dinner. It actually took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out where all the kitchen utensils were. But I managed - I got a tray out and assembled two dinner settings, and with five minutes to spare before the chicken was done I finished drying and combing my hair, and shaved. And gave myself a few good nicks.

Right on time, I got the chicken out of the oven - Nora had sauteed two breasts and dressed them with lemon caper sauce, and baked them with a mix of spring vegetables and rice. After getting it all onto the tray and pouring two glasses of sauvignon blanc, I bussed it all out onto the small patio behind the house.

Nora was lounging, eyes closed, breastfeeding Shaun. Bare feet kicked carelessly up on the table, the pencil still in her hair from earlier. It wasn’t quite evening yet, but the summer sun illuminated her face like something from a Renoir, all warmth and gentleness and delight.

How could I have been so selfish.

“Nora?” I asked again, this time with a bit more conviction.

And again she smiled at me with some kind of divine patience, and said, “You clean up nice, don’t ya?” I set the table and sat down beside her, waiting to begin eating until she was done feeding Shaun.

“Look, when we first met, I know you weren’t into the whole baby thing. And that’s fine, it’s a lot to handle. You didn’t get me pregnant, you didn’t ask for this, but I’d hoped. I mean, as Shaun gets older, he’s going to want to know you. Even if he doesn’t call you dad, even if we don’t stick to how a traditional family works. Shaun is going to want _something_. Support. Approval. He’s going to need a little structure, a little encouragement from someone other than me from time to time.”

The baby was dozing off again, as Nora held him in the crook of her arm and straightened her blouse. “You want me to hold him for a sec?” I offered.

“Sure, thanks,” she said, and handed him to me. She had afforded me the luxury of not having to worry about the baby much over the last three months. We actually hadn’t discussed him much - he was Jack’s child, not mine, after all. I knew Nora loved him more than life itself. She’d risked everything to have the baby, she’d put her career on hold and voluntarily stopped talking to her parents. But she’d never pressed the child on me, never asked outright for anything.

Shaun slept in my grasp. Normally I’d put him down and get on to whatever else I had going. But there was something warm and easy about holding him now, delicate, still unbelievably tiny. It didn’t make any logical sense. The boy wasn’t mine, didn’t carry my genes. I’d never made any promises to his mother. Objectively the child meant almost nothing to me.

How do you fall in love with something so outrageous as a baby? Something that makes horrendous messes, something that steals your sleep, something that screams and cries and wants for everything but gives nothing in return -

Kind of like me, actually.

How did Nora manage.

How?

* * *

 

I am not repulsed by members of the female sex. I never have been. But what I mean when I say that I’m a homosexual is that I only desire to have sexual relations with other men. Always have. Probably always will.

I came to realize it first in high school. It took a while to figure out, mostly because I spent a long time wishing it wasn’t true. Naturally, I didn’t let anyone know.

Captain Frey wasn’t the first person to make advances on me. I had had one other partner, during my unfinished time at college in New York. A sports-jock type named Brendon. It started as lust and stayed that way for a while, meetings in empty locker rooms, in common spaces after the janitor had turned out the lights. He was good - didn’t ask for any commitment, didn’t bother me otherwise.

It was infinitely liberating to be able to express that part of me, albeit in secret, in any way at all. The only wrinkle was that I’d started to fall in love with the idiot by the time I got my draft notice. My heart is sore for that time. Not so much for Brendon, but for the simplicity of it. Pleasure without consequence.

So Nora started out very, _very_ carefully in our bed. I never asked her about it, but the first few nights in the house I don’t remember her coming to bed at all. Next, she joined me but kept to her side, and we never touched, never faced each other. That went on until the night in June I finally decided I had the guts to act like a normal person again.

After that, we allowed ourselves to roll over and share a little time and space. I let her touch my hands and she let me touch hers. She woke me up in the morning. We talked.

“You talk in your sleep sometimes, you know,” she said.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “Sometimes, the other guys in my bunk would throw shit at me and wake me up, and just go _Shut the fuck up, Pier, nobody cares_.”

“That’s rude as hell.”

I snorted. “It wasn’t that bad.”

We unlearned the embarrassment of having our bare feet brush against each other in the middle of the night. Of bedhead. Of morning breath. Of accidentally leaving dirty underwear hanging on the towel rack in the bathroom. We learned to forgive burps and farts and smelly shoes. We learned to forgive burnt coffee. We learned to forgive dishes in the sink and not taking out the trash every single time.

I got back on the household finances. Nora had been right - we were gonna be fine for another few months. But I needed a job.

Pillows weren’t necessarily kept geometrically flush to the headboard all the time. They were poked and punched into shape, scrunched up and drooled on, swapped back and forth.

“So, wait, if you like guys, I don’t understand.”

“Well, it’s like - I’m not completely grossed out by women. I never have been, really. I’ve just never wanted to have _sex_ with a woman.”

“Then how do you know you never will?”

“I don’t,” I replied. “But I’m not gonna hold out, I’m not gonna wait around for something to magically change. I know my type, and so far, I’ve had a 100% rate of people I’m sexually attracted to having dicks.”

She laughed. “But you don’t think women are gross?”

“Not at all,” I said, “no, no, women are beautiful. Just think of it this way, is how I figure - there are all sorts of things in the world that are beautiful. Stained glass windows, classical music - I mean, I can find beauty in a flower. Soft velvety petals, sweet smell, delicate stem, not to mention the natural mathematical precision of - a flower can make you feel all sorts of things, poetic things, transcendent things, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever want to fuck one.”

“That’s not a good comparison, I’ve never heard of a flower-sexual.”

“You’re quite the Devil’s advocate,” I teased. “Look, maybe - maybe we don’t fall in love with beautiful things. Maybe things - and people - maybe people become beautiful _after_ we fall in love. Maybe it's more - more a state of heart than a state of mind. Not something you can reason out. It just is what it is.”

Kisses on the hands, kisses on the cheeks, kisses on the top of her head, light with hairspray. We had to unlearn and relearn what it all meant - a hand on my waist or her hip wasn’t a come-on. It was only ever a desire to be close. To dance a little when a good song came on the radio, to hold each other before falling asleep. Sometimes for my benefit and sometimes for hers - alright, more for mine.

“I didn’t think that anything could scare you after what you’ve seen.”

“See, that’s the problem - _everything_ does. Maybe - maybe I just got used to everything being dangerous, and I just forgot how to turn it off.”

“I - Mark. Look at me. Just for a moment, sweetheart.” Her head was resting on the pillow next to mine, and I looked into her eyes. “I’ve been reading a little about - well, about battle fatigue. And usually when someone’s got it, they go to a hospital or a sanitarium for a few weeks of rest.”

“But it’s been months, now, and I've had all the peace and quiet in the world."

“I know, I know, and I know I’m not a doctor. I don’t want to go and tell you you have this condition when you don’t, especially if it’s something so serious. But, maybe - I mean, they say that the condition relates to response time and nerves, that sort of thing. Say that those things can be managed if not cured. But that’s only the acute symptoms. What about after that?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Nora. I’m kind of - I’m working through it. I don’t know what’s on the other side because I’m not there yet. But I’m _not_ going to a sanitarium. You know what they do to fags in there?”

She scooched closer to me, I wrapped my arms around her and tucked her head under my chin, and she rolled her shoulders to fit inside mine. “Everything seems dangerous to you?”

“I think so,” I said. “Maybe not overtly, it’s not a sharp fear, not the kind that you see in horror films, not like that - it’s quiet, it curls around in your guts until you can’t move.”

“That can’t be. You’re getting better, I know you are.”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m just getting really good at faking it.”

Nora giggled. “Faking it, sorry, my mind’s in the gutter.”

I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Let me know if you find mine down there, huh? Little guy went on vacation and never came back.”

“I will,” she snickered. “Oh my God, I used to fake it with Jack all the time. He always bought it hook line and sinker, he was so pleased with himself, it was all I could do to keep myself from laughing.”

“Serves him right, fuckin’ alpha-male.”

“You’re gonna be fine,” Nora soothed, running a smooth hand across my torso. “You might be afraid, but there’s still life in you, that dark sense of humor, that spark isn’t gone. They didn’t beat you, not completely. Doesn’t matter how scared you are. All that matters is that you meet your fear when it finds you. I know you’re trying. I know some days, you win, some days, you lose. But you’re still fighting. And that’s what counts.”

“I wanna try harder.”

“I know you must. And I’m so proud of you for it. They didn’t beat you, they didn’t get all of you.”

“I wanna - I wanna do more. Be there, for you and - Shaun too. You’re right, he is gonna need someone - maybe not a dad, but he’s gonna need a male figure in his life at some point. He shouldn’t want for that. Things like teaching him to tie his shoes. Ride a bike, fix a car, do long sums. Not in that order, obviously.”

“You would do that for him? For us?”

“Of course. Least I could do. You saved my life, agreeing to this, you know.”

“I know, babe. I know.”

“I’m gonna do more, I’m gonna be there for you. This house, this thing we’re doing, you shouldn’t have to do it alone - shush, I know you _could_ , I mean, you _have_ been for Chrissakes. Big help I’ve been. You’re amazing, you’re holding all three of us together.”

“You don’t have to do this,” she murmured. “I’m benefiting from this, too, you know. You don’t _have_ to do anything. Household stuff, taking care of the baby, it’s nothing. It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through. I can do all that with a hand tied behind my back, you’re fighting every day just to breathe, just to eat.”

“But it’s not enough,” I said. “Not for you.”


End file.
